Reese's New Red Velvet Peanut Butter Cups Aren't Bringing The Love This Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is on its way, and with it comes an onslaught of red and pink treats. This year, the Hershey company is putting together the two things that have become synonymous with the holiday: chocolate and the color red. The company is premiering limited-edition Reese's Red Velvet Peanut Butter Cups. The Reese's cups will be available in three sizes — a bag of miniature cups, a two-cup pack, and a king-size pack –all perfect for your Valentine's Day chocolate needs.

These Reese's treats will bring together two classic sweets. One is the ever-popular classic Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, which has been around for nearly a century. The other is the lightly chocolatey and shockingly colored red velvet cake. As someone who enjoys red velvet cake and whose favorite candy is Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, I knew I had to try this new flavor as soon as possible. I gathered the bag of Reese's Red Velvet Peanut Butter Cups provided to me by Hershey's — along with some standard Reese's cups I had in my house — and got to tasting.

The thing that separates the Reese's Red Velvet Peanut Butter Cups from the classic ones is the layer of red velvet-flavored creme that is on the top. If you look at these special-edition peanut butter cups, you will see that about halfway up the shell of the candy, the chocolate turns into a muted red candy topper. Visually, this is a striking distinction, but the question then becomes what the substantive difference in taste is.

Red velvet cake is a lightly flavored cocoa cake that has been dyed bright red. Looking at the ingredients in Red Velvet Peanut Butter Cups, we see that the major difference from the original peanut butter cups is the addition of some oils and sugar, and, of course, red food dye. There are some additional "natural and artificial flavors" that are not found in the classic version of the candy, so perhaps this helps lend that red velvet flavor to the red velvet-flavored creme.

This is not Reese's first foray into the world of specialty flavors. In the past, Reese's has created flavors such as Crunchy Cookie with cookie bits mixed into the peanut butter, Inside Out (which was a peanut butter shell with a chocolate filling), peanut butter and banana creme, a version that included marshmallow filling along with the peanut butter, and a peanut butter cup that included a mallow-top, just to name a few. This last one is the most similar to the Reese's Red Velvet Peanut Butter Cup in the sense that it involves a flavored creme shell topper rather than an additional ingredient to the candy's center.

Reese's also seems to like to bring these specialty flavors out around the holidays. The aforementioned mallow-top candy was a flavor that debuted before Easter a few years ago. For Halloween in 2024, Reese's brought out Werewolf Tracks, which featured a white vanilla-flavored creme topper with ingredients strikingly similar to the Reese's Red Velvet Peanut Butter Cup, minus the red food dye.

Now, of course, Reese's is not the only brand that has featured a red velvet candy for Valentine's Day. Back in 2014, consumers could grab a bag of red velvet M&M's, and in 2019, Kit Kat made a Red Velvet candy bar. It seems no Valentine's Day is complete without some company offering a red velvet-flavored something.

Naturally, these candies featuring a pink top on them are made for Valentine's Day. The good news is you can get yourself or your loved one some Reese's Red Velvet Peanut Butter Cups soon. The red velvet-flavored candies can be found starting in January 2025 in various stores, such as Walmart and CVS. That said, as of the end of December 2024, I have started to see some popping up in stores near me as well as on Amazon, so keep an eye out.

Now for the bad news: These peanut butter cups are available only for a limited time. The Hershey Company has not yet released an exact date for when these candies will no longer be available on the shelves, but the Reese's Red Velvet Peanut Butter Cups are only here as part of a limited release for Valentine's Day. The exact pricing of the candy will vary based on where you are located, but in our area, it looks like king-size cups will be available for around $1.97, while a 9.3-ounce bag of miniature Reese's Cups will be around $5.99.

Holidays are a time for enjoying a sweet treat, and this particular treat is supposed to be a combination of two other classic treats. We all know going into this that Reese's isn't a healthy food, and that is okay. The good news is that despite incorporating an additional dessert flavor into this candy, the nutritional values didn't change substantially. The new miniature Reese's Red Velvet Peanut Butter Cup has 130 calories per serving (three miniature pieces), 8 grams of fat, and 13 grams of sugar. Classic miniature candies also contain 130 calories plus 7 grams of fat and 14 grams of sugar.

As a nice little bonus, there is some protein in Reese's because of the peanut butter, with one serving of the minute red velvets offering 3 grams. While this isn't a huge amount of protein, it is slightly more than what's in a serving of Hershey's Kisses, which also has more sugar, so let's keep things in perspective.

The Reese's Red Velvet Peanut Butter Cup is quite pretty. It has a lovely pink top. The foil wrappers on the miniature ones are festive with little hearts on them for Valentine's Day. They are great as a fun holiday treat, but that is about it.

As taste goes, these Reese's Red Velvet cups did not "wow" me. Quite the opposite. I felt underwhelmed and merely non-offended by the flavor rather than excited. The red velvet creme is pretty much red velvet in color and name only; the flavor does not really elicit the flavor of a red velvet cake. There are mild notes of vanilla and slight hints of something that might be fruity. It isn't bad, but if I hadn't known going into it that it was supposed to be red velvet, I would never have guessed that was the flavor.

The classic chocolate peanut butter cup is a classic for a reason. Part of the charm is the simplicity of the flavor. By adding this third ambiguous flavor, you end up with a chocolate cup that is trying to accomplish a lot but simply falls short. These cups aren't bad. I will almost certainly finish off this whole bag. However, if given the choice between a Reese's Red Velvet Peanut Butter Cup and a Reese's classic, I would choose the classic every time. The red velvet ones are good for show and holiday spirit but not much else.

Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are one of my favorite candies. I eat and have Reese's in my house on a shockingly frequent basis, which is what makes me so qualified to judge this new flavor. To test the new Reese's Red Velvet Peanut Butter Cups, I, of course, had to eat them. I tried the miniature version, which is what was provided by Hershey. First I tried the red velvet cup as a whole, creme topping, peanut butter filling, and chocolate shell bottom all together in one bite. Then, to get a better sense of the red velvet creme, I broke off pieces of the topping to try on its own.

In addition, I also taste-tested the Reese's Red Velvet Peanut Butter Cups alongside the Reese's classic and Werewolf Tracks varieties. This was to get a baseline for the taste of Reese's and an example of one of the other specialty flavors.